WASMO gets PM's award

Gandhinagar, Apr 21 (UNI) Water and Sanitation Management Organisation (WASMO) of Gujarat today received Prime Minister's award for excellent governance in public services for the year 2006-07.

Official sources here said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a function held at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi gave the prestigious award to Jaipal Singh, Joint Secretary (Water Supply) of Gujarat Government from Prime Minister. The award was given for best quality of services in supplying drinking water successfully as the ''Mission Mode Approach'' to all villages of the state.

According to Secretary (Water supply) V S Gadhvi, due to noble pro-active facilitation approach and strong mobilisation process by WASMO and its partner organisation, the response from rural community to the decentralisation process has been overwhelming and 10,600 villages across the state have formed ''Pani Samitis'' to take up all community drinking water supply schemes.

He said in about 6,200 villages the work has been taken up. Of which, 3,200 villages have commissioned the projects and in remaining 3,000 villages, the works are in progress. WASMO has also formed over 13,000 water qualitytesting scheme at village level for monitoring of quality of drinking water sources by the communities themselves.

WASMO was established in 2002 by the state government as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to facilitate all community managed in village drinking water supply programme in a Mission Mode Approach.

WASMO's mandate was to empower and facilitate rural communities and Panchayat Raj Institutions to demand, plan, implementation and operate where there is no village drinking water supply and sanitation system. It facilitates formation of Village Water and Sanitation Committees (Pani Samitis) in villages of Gujarat through social process, he added.